Bathsheba before David

Four long, narrow pictures in this room belong together, each about 30 centimetres high and more than one and a half metres wide. Tintoretto painted them around 1543 or 1544. Pictures of that shape were usually made to be set into furniture or wall panelling, where a story had to run sideways like a frieze. All four take their subjects from the Old Testament. This one shows Bathsheba brought before King David. David had seen her bathing from the roof of his palace and sent for her, although she was married to Uriah, one of his soldiers. He then had Uriah placed in the front line of battle, where he was killed, and took Bathsheba as his wife. Their son was Solomon, who meets the Queen of Sheba in one of the other three pictures.